What Pacific Islanders Want You To Know
The Long Afterlife of Nikkei Wartime Incarceration by
The Long Afterlife of Nikkei Wartime Incarceration reexamines the history of imprisonment of U.S. and Canadian citizens of Japanese descent during World War II. Karen M. Inouye explores how historical events can linger in individual and collective memory and then crystallize in powerful moments of political engagement. Drawing on interviews and untapped archival materials--regarding politicians Norman Mineta and Warren Furutani, sociologist Tamotsu Shibutani, and Canadian activists Art Miki and Mary Kitagawa, among others--Inouye considers the experiences of former wartime prisoners and their on-going involvement in large-scale educational and legislative efforts. While many consider wartime imprisonment an isolated historical moment, Inouye shows how imprisonment and the suspension of rights have continued to impact political discourse and public policies in both the United States and Canada long after their supposed political and legal reversal. In particular, she attends to how activist groups can use the persistence of memory to engage empathetically with people across often profound cultural and political divides. This book addresses the mechanisms by which injustice can transform both its victims and its perpetrators, detailing the dangers of suspending rights during times of crisis as well as the opportunities for more empathetic agency.
Last Boat Out of Shanghai by
The dramatic, real-life stories of four young people caught up in the mass exodus of Shanghai in the wake of China's 1949 Communist Revolution-a precursor to the struggles faced by emigrants today. Shanghai has historically been China's jewel, its richest, most modern city. The bustling metropolis was home to sophisticated intellectuals, entrepreneurs, and a thriving middle class when Mao's proletarian revolution emerged victorious from the long civil war. Terrified of the horrors the Communists would wreak upon their lives, citizens of Shanghai who could afford to fled in every direction. Seventy years later, the last generation to fully recall this massive exodus have opened the story to Chinese American journalist Helen Zia, who interviewed hundreds of exiles about their journey through one of the most tumultuous events of the twentieth century. From these moving accounts, Zia weaves the story of four young Shanghai residents who wrestled with the decision to abandon everything as refugees in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the U.S. Young Benny, who became the unwilling heir to his father's dark wartime legacy, must choose between escaping Hong Kong or navigating the intricacies of Communist China. The resolute Annuo, forced to flee her home with her father, a defeated Nationalist official, becomes an unwelcome exile in Taiwan. The financially strapped Ho fights deportation in order to continue his studies in the U.S. while his family struggles at home. And Bing, given away by her poor parents, faces the prospect of a new life among strangers in America. Echoing the heroism of many other refugees from catastrophic events, the lives of these men and women reveal the dignity and triumph of personal survival. As the daughter of immigrants from China, Zia is uniquely equipped to explain how crises like the Shanghai transition affect children and their families, students and their futures, and, ultimately, the way we see ourselves and those around us. Last Boat Out of Shanghai brings a poignant human angle to the experiences of refugees then and, by extension, today.
The Girl with Seven Names by
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An extraordinary insight into life under one of the world's most ruthless and secretive dictatorships - and the story of one woman's terrifying struggle to avoid capture/repatriation and guide her family to freedom. As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee was one of millions trapped by a secretive and brutal communist regime. Her home on the border with China gave her some exposure to the world beyond the confines of the Hermit Kingdom and, as the famine of the 1990s struck, she began to wonder, question and to realise that she had been brainwashed her entire life. Given the repression, poverty and starvation she witnessed surely her country could not be, as she had been told "the best on the planet"? Aged seventeen, she decided to escape North Korea. She could not have imagined that it would be twelve years before she was reunited with her family.
Asianfail by
Eleanor Ty's bold exploration of literature, plays, and film reveals how young Asian Americans and Asian Canadians have struggled with the ethos of self-sacrifice preached by their parents. This new generation's narratives focus on protagonists disenchanted with their daily lives. Many are depressed. Some are haunted by childhood memories of war, trauma, and refugee camps. Rejecting an obsession with professional status and money, they seek fulfillment by prioritizing relationships, personal growth, and cultural success. As Ty shows, these storytellers have done more than reject a narrowly defined road to happiness. They have rejected neoliberal capitalism itself. In so doing, they demand that the rest of us reconsider our outmoded ideas about the so-called model minority.
Chinese and Americans by
Chinese-American relations are often viewed through the prism of power rivalry and civilization clash. But China and America's shared history is much more than a catalog of conflicts. Using culture rather than politics or economics as a reference point, Xu Guoqi highlights significant yet neglected cultural exchanges in which China and America have contributed to each other's national development, building the foundation of what Zhou Enlai called a relationship of ?equality and mutual benefit.? Xu begins with the story of Anson Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln's ambassador to China, and the 120 Chinese students he played a crucial role in bringing to America, inaugurating a program of Chinese international study that continues today. Such educational crosscurrents moved both ways, as is evident in Xu's profile of the remarkable Ge Kunhua, the Chinese poet who helped spearhead Chinese language teaching in Boston in the 1870s. Xu examines the contributions of two American scholars to Chinese political and educational reform in the twentieth century: the law professor Frank Goodnow, who took part in making the Yuan Shikai government's constitution; and the philosopher John Dewey, who helped promote Chinese modernization as a visiting scholar at Peking University and elsewhere. Xu also shows that it was Americans who first introduced to China the modern Olympic movement, and that China has used sports ever since to showcase its rise as a global power. These surprising shared traditions between two nations, Xu argues, provide the best roadmap for the future of Sino-American relations.
Citizens of Asian America by
Winner, 2013-2014 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, Adult Non-Fiction presented by the Asian Pacific American Librarian Association During the Cold War, Soviet propaganda highlighted U.S. racism in order to undermine the credibility of U.S. democracy. In response, incorporating racial and ethnic minorities in order to affirm that America worked to ensure the rights of all and was superior to communist countries became a national imperative. In Citizens of Asian America, Cindy I-Fen Cheng explores how Asian Americans figured in this effort to shape the credibility of American democracy, even while the perceived "foreignness" of Asian Americans cast them as likely alien subversives whose activities needed monitoring following the communist revolution in China and the outbreak of the Korean War. While histories of international politics and U.S. race relations during the Cold War have largely overlooked the significance of Asian Americans, Cheng challenges the black-white focus of the existing historiography. She highlights how Asian Americans made use of the government's desire to be leader of the "free world" by advocating for civil rights reforms, such as housing integration, increased professional opportunities, and freedom from political persecution. Further, Cheng examines the liberalization of immigration policies, which worked not only to increase the civil rights of Asian Americans but also to improve the nation's ties with Asian countries, providing an opportunity for the U.S. government to broadcast, on a global scale, the freedom and opportunity that American society could offer.
Asian American Histories of the United States by 
The Making of Asian America by
The definitive history of Asian Americans by one of the nation's preeminent scholars on the subject. In the past fifty years, Asian Americans have helped change the face of America and are now the fastest growing group in the United States. But as award-winning historian Erika Lee reminds us, Asian Americans also have deep roots in the country. The Making of Asian America tells the little-known history of Asian Americans and their role in American life, from the arrival of the first Asians in the Americas to the present-day. An epic history of global journeys and new beginnings, this book shows how generations of Asian immigrants and their American-born descendants have made and remade Asian American life in the United States: sailors who came on the first trans-Pacific ships in the 1500s; indentured "coolies" who worked alongside African slaves in the Caribbean; and Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, and South Asian immigrants who were recruited to work in the United States only to face massive racial discrimination, Asian exclusion laws, and for Japanese Americans, incarceration during World War II. Over the past fifty years, a new Asian America has emerged out of community activism and the arrival of new immigrants and refugees. No longer a "despised minority," Asian Americans are now held up as America's "model minorities" in ways that reveal the complicated role that race still plays in the United States. Published to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the passage of the United States' Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that has remade our "nation of immigrants," this is a new and definitive history of Asian Americans. But more than that, it is a new way of understanding America itself, its complicated histories of race and immigration, and its place in the world today.
A Feeling of Belonging by
When we imagine the activities of Asian American women in the mid-twentieth century, our first thoughts are not of skiing, beauty pageants, magazine reading, and sororities. Yet, Shirley Jennifer Lim argues, these are precisely the sorts of leisure practices many second generation Chinese, Filipina, and Japanese American women engaged in during this time. In A Feeling of Belonging, Lim highlights the cultural activities of young, predominantly unmarried Asian American women from 1930 to 1960. This period marks a crucial generation--the first in which American-born Asians formed a critical mass and began to make their presence felt in the United States. Though they were distinguished from previous generations by their American citizenship, it was only through these seemingly mundane "American"activities that they were able to overcome two-dimensional stereotypes of themselves as kimono-clad "Orientals." Lim traces the diverse ways in which these young women sought claim to cultural citizenship, exploring such topics as the nation's first Asian American sorority, Chi Alpha Delta; the cultural work of Chinese American actress Anna May Wong; Asian American youth culture and beauty pageants; and the achievement of fame of three foreign-born Asian women in the late 1950s. By wearing poodle skirts, going to the beach, and producing magazines, she argues, they asserted not just their American-ness, but their humanity: a feeling of belonging.
The Color of Success by
The Color of Success tells of the astonishing transformation of Asians in the United States from the "yellow peril" to "model minorities"--peoples distinct from the white majority but lauded as well-assimilated, upwardly mobile, and exemplars of traditional family values--in the middle decades of the twentieth century. As Ellen Wu shows, liberals argued for the acceptance of these immigrant communities into the national fold, charging that the failure of America to live in accordance with its democratic ideals endangered the country's aspirations to world leadership. Weaving together myriad perspectives, Wu provides an unprecedented view of racial reform and the contradictions of national belonging in the civil rights era. She highlights the contests for power and authority within Japanese and Chinese America alongside the designs of those external to these populations, including government officials, social scientists, journalists, and others. And she demonstrates that the invention of the model minority took place in multiple arenas, such as battles over zoot suiters leaving wartime internment camps, the juvenile delinquency panic of the 1950s, Hawaii statehood, and the African American freedom movement. Together, these illuminate the impact of foreign relations on the domestic racial order and how the nation accepted Asians as legitimate citizens while continuing to perceive them as indelible outsiders. By charting the emergence of the model minority stereotype, The Color of Success reveals that this far-reaching, politically charged process continues to have profound implications for how Americans understand race, opportunity, and nationhood.
American Chinatown by
The mystery of Chinatown as foreign yet familiar has been long established in the American imagination. Visitors come to expect this, looking for "something different" in its narrow lanes and fish markets. They can taste a world apart, listen to a foreign language, and try to barter for a trinket on the street--without ever leaving the country. And then they go home, sometimes just a few streets away, and get on with the everyday. What is truly under the radar is what they don't see: a unique community getting on with its own everyday. In American Chinatown, Bonnie Tsui takes an affectionate and awestruck look at the bustling part of town that has bewitched her ever since she was a child, when she would eagerly await her grandfather's return from the fortune cookie factory. By interweaving her own personal impressions with the experiences of those living in Chinatowns all across the United States today, Tsui beautifully captures its vivid stories, giving readers a deeper look into what "Chinatown" means to its inhabitants--and to America at large.
The Third Asiatic Invasion by
Winner of the 2012-2013 Asian/Pacific American Librarian's Association Book Award Winner of the 2013 American Sociological Association's Asia and Asian America Section Distinguished Book Award The first half of the twentieth century witnessed a wave of Filipino immigration to the United States, following in the footsteps of earlier Chinese and Japanese immigrants, the first and second "Asiatic invasions." Perceived as alien because of their Asian ethnicity yet legally defined as American nationals granted more rights than other immigrants, Filipino American national identity was built upon the shifting sands of contradiction, ambiguity, and hostility. Rick Baldoz explores the complex relationship between Filipinos and the U.S. by looking at the politics of immigration, race, and citizenship on both sides of the Philippine-American divide: internationally through an examination of American imperial ascendancy and domestically through an exploration of the social formation of Filipino communities in the United States. He reveals how American practices of racial exclusion repeatedly collided with the imperatives of U.S. overseas expansion. A unique portrait of the Filipino American experience, The Third Asiatic Invasion links the Filipino experience to that of Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Chinese and Native Americans, among others, revealing how the politics of exclusion played out over time against different population groups. Weaving together an impressive range of materials--including newspapers, government reports, legal documents and archival sources--into a seamless narrative, Baldoz illustrates how the quixotic status of Filipinos played a significant role in transforming the politics of race, immigration and nationality in the United States.
A Thousand Miles to Freedom by
Eunsun Kim was born in North Korea, one of the most secretive and oppressive countries in the modern world. As a child Eunsun loved her country...despite her school field trips to public executions, daily self-criticism sessions, and the increasing gnaw of hunger as the country-wide famine escalated. By the time she was eleven years old, Eunsun's father and grandparents had died of starvation, and Eunsun too was in danger of starving. Finally, her mother decided to escape North Korea with Eunsun and her sister, not knowing that they were embarking on a journey that would take them nine long years to complete. Told with grace and courage, her memoir is a riveting expose of North Korea's totalitarian regime and, ultimately, a testament to the strength and resilience of the human spirit.
Big Little Man by
"A ruthlessly honest personal story and a devastating critique of contemporary American culture." --Seattle Times A "searingly honest self-exploration"* of the experience and psyche of the Asian American male, including Tizon's stunning final article, "My Family's Slave" Shame, Alex Tizon tells us, is universal--his own happened to be about race. To counteract the steady diet of American television and movies that taught Tizon to be ashamed of his face, his skin color, his height, he turned outward. ("I had to educate myself on my own worth. It was a sloppy, piecemeal education, but I had to do it because no one else was going to do it for me.") Tizon illuminates his youthful search for Asian men who had no place in his American history books or classrooms. And he tracks what he experienced as seismic change: the rise of powerful, dynamic Asian men like Yahoo! cofounder Jerry Yang, actor Ken Watanabe, and NBA starter Jeremy Lin. Included in this new edition ofBig Little Manis Alex Tizon's "My Family's Slave"--2017's best-read digital article. Published only weeks after Tizon's death in 2017, it delivers a provocative, haunting, and ultimately redemptive coda. *New York Times "Alex Tizon writes with acumen and courage, and the result is a book at once illuminating and, yes, liberating." -- Peter Ho Davies, author ofThe Fortunes
The ISSEI: The world of the first generation Japanese immigrants, 1885-1924 by 
They Call Me Moses Masaoka by 
Not Quite Not White by
A first-generation immigrant's exploration of race and assimilation in the United States, an American's journey into the heart of not-whiteness. At the age of 12, Sharmila Sen emigrated from India to the U.S. The year was 1982, and everywhere she turned, she was asked to self-report her race-on INS forms, at the doctor's office, in middle school. Never identifying with a race in the India of her childhood, she rejects her new "not quite" designation-not quite white, not quite black, not quite Asian-and spends much of her life attempting to blend into American whiteness. But after her teen years trying to assimilate-watching shows like General Hospital and The Jeffersons, dancing to Duran Duran and Prince, and perfecting the art of Jell-O no-bake desserts-she is forced to reckon with the hard questions- What does it mean to be white, why does whiteness retain the magic cloak of invisibility while other colors are made hypervisible, and how much does whiteness figure into Americanness? Part memoir, part manifesto, Not Quite Not White is a searing appraisal of race and a path forward for the next not quite not white generation-a witty and sharply honest story of discovering that not-whiteness can be the very thing that makes us American.
The Eaves of Heaven by
One of the Ten Best Books of the Year, Washington Post Book World One of the Los Angeles Times' Favorite Books of the Year One of the Top Ten National Books of 2008, Portland Oregonian A 2009 Honor Book of the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association "Few books have combined the historical scope and the literary skill to give the foreign reader a sense of events from a Vietnamese perspective. . . . Now we can add Andrew Pham's Eaves of Heaven to this list of indispensable books." --New York Times Book Review "Searing . . . vivid-and harrowing . . . Here is war and life through the eyes of a Vietnamese everyman." --Seattle Times Once wealthy landowners, Thong Van Pham's family was shattered by the tumultuous events of the twentieth century: the French occupation of Indochina, the Japanese invasion during World War II, and the Vietnam War. Told in dazzling chapters that alternate between events in the past and those closer to the present, The Eaves of Heaven brilliantly re-creates the trials of everyday life in Vietnam as endured by one man, from the fall of Hanoi and the collapse of French colonialism to the frenzied evacuation of Saigon. Pham offers a rare portal into a lost world as he chronicles Thong Van Pham's heartbreaks, triumphs, and bizarre reversals of fortune, whether as a South Vietnamese soldier pinned down by enemy fire, a prisoner of the North Vietnamese under brutal interrogation, or a refugee desperately trying to escape Vietnam after the last American helicopter has abandoned Saigon. This is the story of a man caught in the maelstrom of twentieth-century politics, a gripping memoir told with the urgency of a wartime dispatch by a writer of surpassing talent.
The Good Immigrants by
Conventionally, US immigration history has been understood through the lens of restriction and those who have been barred from getting in. In contrast, The Good Immigrants considers immigration from the perspective of Chinese elites--intellectuals, businessmen, and students--who gained entrance because of immigration exemptions. Exploring a century of Chinese migrations, Madeline Hsu looks at how the model minority characteristics of many Asian Americans resulted from US policies that screened for those with the highest credentials in the most employable fields, enhancing American economic competitiveness. The earliest US immigration restrictions targeted Chinese people but exempted students as well as individuals who might extend America's influence in China. Western-educated Chinese such as Madame Chiang Kai-shek became symbols of the US impact on China, even as they patriotically advocated for China's modernization. World War II and the rise of communism transformed Chinese students abroad into refugees, and the Cold War magnified the importance of their talent and training. As a result, Congress legislated piecemeal legal measures to enable Chinese of good standing with professional skills to become citizens. Pressures mounted to reform American discriminatory immigration laws, culminating with the 1965 Immigration Act. Filled with narratives featuring such renowned Chinese immigrants as I. M. Pei, The Good Immigrants examines the shifts in immigration laws and perceptions of cultural traits that enabled Asians to remain in the United States as exemplary, productive Americans.
Bento Box in the Heartland by
While growing up in Versailles, an Indiana farm community, Linda Furiya tried to balance the outside world of Midwestern America with the Japanese traditions of her home life. As the only Asian family in a tiny township, Furiya's life revolved around Japanese food and the extraordinary lengths her parents went to in order to gather the ingredients needed to prepare it.As immigrants, her parents approached the challenges of living in America, and maintaining their Japanese diets, with optimism and gusto. Furiva, meanwhile, was acutely aware of how food set her apart from her peers: She spent her first day of school hiding in the girls' restroom, examining her rice balls and chopsticks, and longing for a Peanut Bullter and Jelly sandwich. Bento Box in the Heartland is an insightful and reflective coming-of-age tale. Beautifully written, each chapter is accompanied by a family recipe of mouth-watering Japanese comfort food.
Garden of the World by
Nearly a century before it became known as Silicon Valley, the Santa Clara Valley was world-renowned for something else: the succulent fruits and vegetables grown in its fertile soil. Virtually all farms were owned by whites, but the soil was largely worked by Asian immigrants. In Garden ofthe World, Cecilia Tsu tells the overlooked and intertwined histories of the land of the Santa Clara Valley and the Asian immigrants who cultivated it. Weaving together the story of the three overlapping waves of Asian migration from China, Japan, and the Philippines in the nineteenth and twentiethcenturies, Tsu offers a comparative history that sheds light on white and Asian Californians' understandings of race, gender, and national identity.From the mid-nineteenth century on, white farmers had an increased need for labor, and Chinese immigrants willingly and disproportionately filled it. Despite this common labor arrangement, the idea of the independent family farm, worked solely by family members, became even more deeply entrenched,particularly in the West. Farm owners justified the labor of Chinese men as sojourning immigrants disconnected from family, capable of only menial agricultural work. They also viewed Asian crops as marginal, which justified their increasing reliance on foreign workers. Popular belief that theChinese lacked a coherent family structure was later extended to the Japanese, even though immigrant families began settling in the Valley in the late 1910s.As the earlier family farm framework divided along crop and family lines fell apart, it was adapted, this time barring women from field work. The direct threat of Japanese family farming to the white family farm ideal, Tsu argues, played a significant role in the rise of discrimination againstAsians through immigrant exclusion, denial of citizenship, and alien land laws. However, the mutual dependence that characterized Asian-white relations in the Santa Clara Valley prevented the area from becoming a hotbed of racial tension. Efforts to hold on to the white family farm ideal during theDepression led nonwhite laborers, primarily Filipino and Mexican, to be eyed suspiciously, as red-sympathizing foreigners whose involvement in labor militancy revealed a dormant anti-Americanism.Tsu simultaneously tells the story of this agricultural world from the perspectives of the Asian workers who sought to create their own American dream. They saw farming as not just a source of income, but also a way to bolster their community standing. Although they did not share a common heritage,the groups interacted with each other constantly and peacefully, patronizing each others' shops, working for the same landowners, sometimes living in the same area, and encountering many of the same stereotypes.
Driven Out by
Driven Out exposes a shocking story of ethnic cleansing in California and the Pacific Northwest when the first Chinese Americans were rounded up and purged from more than three hundred communities by lawless citizens and duplicitous politicians. From 1848 into the twentieth century, Chinatowns burned across the West as Chinese miners and merchants, lumberjacks and fieldworkers, prostitutes and merchants' wives were violently loaded onto railroad cars or steamers, marched out of town, or killed. But the Chinese fought back--with arms, strikes, and lawsuits and by flatly refusing to leave. When red posters appeared on barns and windows across the United States urging the Chinese to refuse to carry photo identity cards, more than one hundred thousand joined the largest mass civil disobedience to date in the United States. The first Chinese Americans were marched out and starved out. But even facing brutal pogroms, they stood up for their civil rights. This is a story that defines us as a nation and marks our humanity.
Empire Express by
-- A Main Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club -- A finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Awards -- Appeared on the San Francisco Chronicle and Wordstock bestseller lists
A Great and Shining Road by
The Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads were officially joined on May 10, 1869 at Promontory Point, Utah, with the driving of a golden spike. This historic ceremony marked the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. Spanning the Sierras and the "Great American Desert, " the tracks connected San Francisco to Council Bluffs, Iowa. A Great and Shining Road is the exciting story of a mammoth feat that called forth entrepreneurial daring, financial wizardry, technological innovation, political courage and chicanery, and the heroism of thousands of laborers.
Picture Bride Stories by
During the 1885 to 1924 immigration period of plantation laborers from Japan to Hawaii, more than 200,000 Japanese, mostly single men, made the long journey by ship to the Hawaiian Islands. As it became apparent that they would never return to Japan, many of the men sent for brides to join them in their adopted home. More than 20,000 of these "picture brides" immigrated from Japan and Okinawa to Hawaii to marry husbands whom they knew only through photographs exchanged between them or their families. Based on Barbara Kawakami's first-hand interviews with sixteen of these women, Picture Bride Stories is a poignant collection that recounts the diverse circumstances that led them to marry strangers, their voyages to Hawaii, the surprises and trials that they encountered upon arriving, and the lives they led upon settling in a strange new land. Many found hardship, yet persevered and endured the difficult conditions of the sugarcane and pineapple plantations for the sake of their children. As they acclimated to a foreign place and forged new relationships, they overcame challenges and eventually prospered in a better life. The stories of the issei women exemplify the importance of friendships and familial networks in coping with poverty and economic security. Although these remarkable women are gone, their legacy lives on in their children, grandchildren, and succeeding generations. In addition to the oral histories--the result of forty years of interviews--the author provides substantial background on marriage customs and labor practices on the plantations.
Charlie Chan by
Hailed as "irrepressibly spirited and entertaining" (Pico Iyer, Time) and "a fascinating cultural survey" (Paul Devlin, Daily Beast), this provocative first biography of Charlie Chan presents American history in a way that it has never been told before. Yunte Huang ingeniously traces Charlie Chan from his real beginnings as a bullwhip-wielding detective in territorial Hawaii to his reinvention as a literary sleuth and Hollywood film icon. Huang finally resurrects the "honorable detective" from the graveyard of detested postmodern symbols and reclaims him as the embodiment of America's rich cultural diversity. The result is one of the most critically acclaimed books of the year and a "deeply personal . . . voyage into racial stereotyping and the humanizing force of story telling" (Donna Seaman, Los Angeles Times).
Angel Island by
From 1910 to 1940, over half a million people sailed through the Golden Gate, hoping to start a new life in America. But they did not all disembark in San Francisco; instead, most were ferried across the bay to the Angel Island Immigration Station. For many, this was the real gateway to theUnited States. For others, it was a prison and their final destination, before being sent home.In this landmark book, historians Erika Lee and Judy Yung (both descendants of immigrants detained on the island) provide the first comprehensive history of the Angel Island Immigration Station. Drawing on extensive new research, including immigration records, oral histories, and inscriptions onthe barrack walls, the authors produce a sweeping yet intensely personal history of Chinese "paper sons," Japanese picture brides, Korean students, South Asian political activists, Russian and Jewish refugees, Mexican families, Filipino repatriates, and many others from around the world. Theirexperiences on Angel Island reveal how America's discriminatory immigration policies changed the lives of immigrants and transformed the nation.A place of heartrending history and breathtaking beauty, the Angel Island Immigration Station is a National Historic Landmark, and like Ellis Island, it is recognized as one of the most important sites where America's immigration history was made. This fascinating history is ultimately aboutAmerica itself and its complicated relationship to immigration, a story that continues today.Winner of the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association Award for Adult Non-FictionWinner of the Western History Association Caughey Prize
Forbidden Citizens by
"Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates though faculty." -- CHOICE " L]andmark volume on the subject of exclusionary policies against Chinese and Chinese Americans ... a valuable teaching tool ... an exemplary subject reference." -- Library Journal Named an Honor Book by the Asian and Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA), and a Gold Winner of the Benjamin Franklin Award. A whole class of people, forbidden from ever becoming citizens . . . forbidden from even entering the country-their rights torn up and trampled on, left with no political redress. This was the United States of America from 1882 through 1943-if you had the misfortune to be Chinese. The United States Congress banned all Chinese from becoming U.S. citizens from 1882 through 1943, and stopped most Chinese from even entering the country starting in 1882. Forbidden Citizens recounts this long and shameful legislative history. Congress passed restrictive legislation between 1879 and 1904. The most notorious was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, described as "one of the most vulgar forms of barbarism," by Rep. John Kasson (R-IA) in 1882. These laws were targeted not only at immigration, they banned citizenship, even for legal immigrants who had arrived before the gate was closed in 1882. Barred from becoming voters, the Chinese had no political recourse against repeated discrimination. Because their appearance and lifestyle were so different, it was easy to tyrannize the Chinese. Insisting that the Chinese could not assimilate into American culture, lawmakers actively blocked them from doing so. Democrats and Republicans alike found the Chinese easy prey. For the first time, this book assembles the complete legislative history of Congress's Chinese exclusion. "Our nation has the greatest ideals, standing as that 'city upon a hill' for the world over to look toward with hope. Yet we have not always been as welcoming as we have proclaimed. Forbidden Citizens by Martin Gold tells the story of the exclusion of a specific group, the Chinese people, for racial reasons that were expressed in the most shocking terms. It is thorough, thoughtful, and highly relevant today. This work presents the best scholarship in the most accessible manner." -- Frank H. Wu, Chancellor & Dean, University of California Hastings College of the Law "Through engaging narrative, Forbidden Citizens expertly tells a story unfamiliar to most Americans, one that left a permanent scar upon the psyche of Chinese Americans and changed our nation forever. Martin Gold's thorough and pioneering research into decades of Congressional history brings to life the politics of Chinese exclusion in a way no one has." -- Judy Chu, United States Representative (D-CA) "Forbidden Citizens is a moving account of a regrettable part of American history. Marty Gold has done us all a service by bringing this story to light so that our past mistakes are never repeated." -- Scott Brown, United States Senator (R-MA) "An important piece of scholarship, which vividly depicts the intensity of anti-Chinese and anti-Asian feeling that was widespread even among our intellectual and political elite only a century ago." -- Stephen Hsu, Professor of Physics, University of Oregon For Complete Table of Contents, see ForbiddenCitizens.com
Nothing Like It in the World by
In this account of an unprecedented feat of engineering, vision, and courage, Stephen E. Ambrose offers a historical successor to his universally acclaimedUndaunted Courage,which recounted the explorations of the West by Lewis and Clark.Nothing Like It in the Worldis the story of the men who built the transcontinental railroad -- the investors who risked their businesses and money; the enlightened politicians who understood its importance; the engineers and surveyors who risked, and lost, their lives; and the Irish and Chinese immigrants, the defeated Confederate soldiers, and the other laborers who did the backbreaking and dangerous work on the tracks.The Union had won the Civil War and slavery had been abolished, but Abraham Lincoln, who was an early and constant champion of railroads, would not live to see the great achievement. In Ambrose's hands, this enterprise, with its huge expenditure of brainpower, muscle, and sweat, comes to life.The U.S. government pitted two companies -- the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific Railroads -- against each other in a race for funding, encouraging speed over caution. Locomo-tives, rails, and spikes were shipped from the East through Panama or around South America to the West or lugged across the country to the Plains. This was the last great building project to be done mostly by hand: excavating dirt, cutting through ridges, filling gorges, blasting tunnels through mountains.At its peak, the workforce -- primarily Chinese on the Central Pacific, Irish on the Union Pacific -- approached the size of Civil War armies, with as many as fifteen thousand workers on each line. The Union Pacific was led by Thomas "Doc" Durant, Oakes Ames, and Oliver Ames, with Grenville Dodge -- America's greatest railroad builder -- as chief engineer. The Central Pacific was led by California's "Big Four": Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins. The surveyors, the men who picked the route, were latter-day Lewis and Clark types who led the way through the wilderness, living off buffalo, deer, elk, and antelope.In building a railroad, there is only one decisive spot -- the end of the track. Nothing like this great work had been seen in the world when the last spike, a golden one, was driven in at Promontory Summit, Utah, in 1869, as the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific tracks were joined.Ambrose writes with power and eloquence about the brave men -- the famous and the unheralded, ordinary men doing the extraordinary -- who accomplished the spectacular feat that made the continent into a nation.
Empire's Tracks by
Empire's Tracks boldly reframes the history of the transcontinental railroad from the perspectives of the Cheyenne, Lakota, and Pawnee Native American tribes, and the Chinese migrants who toiled on its path. In this meticulously researched book, Manu Karuka situates the railroad within the violent global histories of colonialism and capitalism. Through an examination of legislative, military, and business records, Karuka deftly explains the imperial foundations of U.S. political economy. Tracing the shared paths of Indigenous and Asian American histories, this multisited interdisciplinary study connects military occupation to exclusionary border policies, a linked chain spanning the heart of U.S. imperialism. This highly original and beautifully wrought book unveils how the transcontinental railroad laid the tracks of the U.S. Empire.
The Fortune Cookie Chronicles by
If you think McDonald's is the most ubiquitous restaurant experience in America, consider that there are more Chinese restaurants in America than McDonalds, Burger Kings, and Wendys combined. New York Times reporter and Chinese-American (or American-born Chinese). In her search, Jennifer 8 Lee traces the history of Chinese-American experience through the lens of the food. In a compelling blend of sociology and history, Jenny Lee exposes the indentured servitude Chinese restaurants expect from illegal immigrant chefs, investigates the relationship between Jews and Chinese food, and weaves a personal narrative about her own relationship with Chinese food. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles speaks to the immigrant experience as a whole, and the way it has shaped our country.
Chop Suey, USA by
American diners began to flock to Chinese restaurants more than a century ago, making Chinese food the first mass-consumed cuisine in the United States. By 1980, it had become the country's most popular ethnic cuisine. Chop Suey, USA offers the first comprehensive interpretation of the rise of Chinese food, revealing the forces that made it ubiquitous in the American gastronomic landscape and turned the country into an empire of consumption. Engineered by a politically disenfranchised, numerically small, and economically exploited group, Chinese food's tour de America is an epic story of global cultural encounter. It reflects not only changes in taste but also a growing appetite for a more leisurely lifestyle. Americans fell in love with Chinese food not because of its gastronomic excellence but because of its affordability and convenience, which is why they preferred the quick and simple dishes of China while shunning its haute cuisine. Epitomized by chop suey, American Chinese food was a forerunner of McDonald's, democratizing the once-exclusive dining-out experience for such groups as marginalized Anglos, African Americans, and Jews. The rise of Chinese food is also a classic American story of immigrant entrepreneurship and perseverance. Barred from many occupations, Chinese Americans successfully turned Chinese food from a despised cuisine into a dominant force in the restaurant market, creating a critical lifeline for their community. Chinese American restaurant workers developed the concept of the open kitchen and popularized the practice of home delivery. They streamlined certain Chinese dishes, such as chop suey and egg foo young, turning them into nationally recognized brand names.
Dubious Gastronomy by
California roll, Chinese take-out, American-made kimchi, dogmeat, monosodium glutamate, SPAM--all are examples of what Robert Ji-Song Ku calls "dubious" foods. Strongly associated with Asian and Asian American gastronomy, they are commonly understood as ersatz, depraved, or simply bad. In Dubious Gastronomy, Ku contends that these foods share a spiritual fellowship with Asians in the United States in that the Asian presence, be it culinary or corporeal, is often considered watered-down, counterfeit, or debased manifestations of the "real thing." The American expression of Asianness is defined as doubly inauthentic--as insufficiently Asian and unreliably American when measured against a largely ideological if not entirely political standard of authentic Asia and America. By exploring the other side of what is prescriptively understood as proper Asian gastronomy, Ku suggests that Asian cultural expressions occurring in places such as Los Angeles, Honolulu, New York City, and even Baton Rouge are no less critical to understanding the meaning of Asian food--and, by extension, Asian people--than culinary expressions that took place in Tokyo, Seoul, and Shanghai centuries ago. In critically considering the impure and hybridized with serious and often whimsical intent, Dubious Gastronomy argues that while the notion of cultural authenticity is troubled, troubling, and troublesome, the apocryphal is not necessarily a bad thing: The dubious can be and is often quite delicious. Dubious Gastronomy overlaps a number of disciplines, including American and Asian American studies, Asian diasporic studies, literary and cultural studies, and the burgeoning field of food studies. More importantly, however, the book fulfills the critical task of amalgamating these areas and putting them in conversation with one another. Written in an engaging and fluid style, it promises to appeal a wide audience of readers who seriously enjoys eating--and reading and thinking about--food.
From Canton Restaurant to Panda Express by
Received an Honorable Mention for the 2015-2016 Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature, Adult Non-Fiction category Finalist in the Culinary History category of the 2016 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards​ From Canton Restaurant to Panda Express takes readers on a compelling journey from the California Gold Rush to the present, letting readers witness both the profusion of Chinese restaurants across the United States and the evolution of many distinct American-Chinese iconic dishes from chop suey to General Tso's chicken. Along the way, historian Haiming Liu explains how the immigrants adapted their traditional food to suit local palates, and gives readers a taste of Chinese cuisine embedded in the bittersweet story of Chinese Americans. Treating food as a social history, Liu explores why Chinese food changed and how it has influenced American culinary culture, and how Chinese restaurants have become places where shared ethnic identity is affirmed--not only for Chinese immigrants but also for American Jews. The book also includes a look at national chains like P. F. Chang's and a consideration of how Chinese food culture continues to spread around the globe. Drawing from hundreds of historical and contemporary newspaper reports, journal articles, and writings on food in both English and Chinese, From Canton Restaurant to Panda Express represents a groundbreaking piece of scholarly research. It can be enjoyed equally as a fascinating set of stories about Chinese migration, cultural negotiation, race and ethnicity, diverse flavored Chinese cuisine and its share in American food market today.
The White Devil's Daughters by
During the first hundred years of Chinese immigration--from 1848 to 1943--San Francisco was home to a shockingly extensive underground slave trade in Asian women, who were exploited as prostitutes and indentured servants. In this gripping, necessary book, bestselling author Julia Flynn Siler shines a light on this little-known chapter in our history--and gives us a vivid portrait of the safe house to which enslaved women escaped. The Occidental Mission Home, situated on the edge of Chinatown, served as a gateway to freedom for thousands. Run by a courageous group of female Christian abolitionists, it survived earthquakes, fire, bubonic plague, and violent attacks. We meet Dolly Cameron, who ran the home from 1899 to 1934, and Tien Fuh Wu, who arrived at the house as a young child after her abuse as a household slave drew the attention of authorities. Wu would grow up to become Cameron's translator, deputy director, and steadfast friend. Siler shows how Dolly and her colleagues defied convention and even law--physically rescuing young girls from brothels, snatching them from their smugglers--and how they helped bring the exploiters to justice. Riveting and revelatory, The White Devil's Daughters is a timely, extraordinary account of oppression, resistance, and hope.
The Hope of Another Spring by
Takuichi Fujii (1891?1964) left Japan in 1906 to make his home in Seattle, where he established a business, started a family, and began his artistic practice. When war broke out between the United States and Japan, he and his family were incarcerated along with the more than 100,000 ethnic Japanese located on the West Coast. Sent to detention camps at Puyallup, Washington, and then Minidoka in Idaho, Fujii documented his daily experiences in words and art. The Hope of Another Spring reveals the rare find of a large and heretofore unknown collection of art produced during World War II. The centerpiece of the collection is Fujii's illustrated diary that historian Roger Daniels has called ?the most remarkable document created by a Japanese American prisoner during the wartime incarceration.' Barbara Johns presents Takuichi Fujii's life story and his artistic achievements within the social and political context of the time. Sandy Kita, the artist's grandson, provides translations and an introduction to the diary. The Hope of Another Spring is a significant contribution to Asian American studies, American and regional history, and art history.
Asian American Education by
A volume in Research on the Education of Asian Pacific Americans Series Editors Clara C. Park, California State University, Northridge, Russell Endo, University of Colorado, and Xue Lan Rong, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (Sponsored by SIG-Research on the Education of Asian and Pacific Americans of the American Educational Research Association and National Association for Asian and Pacific American Education) Asian American Education--Asian American Identities, Racial Issues, and Languages presents groundbreaking research that critically challenges the invisibility, stereotyping, and common misunderstandings of Asian Americans by disrupting "customary" discourse and disputing "familiar" knowledge. The chapters in this anthology provide rich, detailed evidence and interpretations of the status and experiences of Asian American students, teachers, and programs in K-12 and higher education, including struggles with racism and other race-related issues. This material is authored by nationally-prominent scholars as well as highly-regarded emerging researchers. As a whole, this volume contributes to the deconstruction of the image of Asian Americans as a model minority and at the same time reconstructs theories to explain their diverse educational experiences. It also draws attention to the cultural and especially structural challenges Asian Americans face when trying to make institutional changes. This book will be of great interest to researchers, teachers, students, and other practitioners and policymakers concerned with the education of Asian Americans as well as other peoples of color.
Yellow: Race in America beyond Black and White by
In the tradition of W. E. B. Du Bois, Cornel West, and other public intellectuals who confronted the "color line" of the twentieth century, journalist, law professor, and activist Frank H. Wu offers a unique perspective on how changing ideas of racial identity will affect race relations in the new century.Often provocative and always thoughtful, this book addresses some of the most controversial contemporary issues: discrimination, immigration, diversity, globalization, and the mixed-race movement, introducing the example of Asian Americans to shed new light on the current debates. Combining personal anecdotes, social-science research, legal cases, history, and original journalistic reporting, Wu discusses damaging Asian American stereotypes such as "the model minority" and "the perpetual foreigner." By offering new ways of thinking about race in American society, Wu's work challenges us to make good on our great democratic experiment.
The State of Asian America: Activism and Resistance in the 1990s by
'Every essay in the State of Asian America brings the reader to a new plateau of understanding....All the essays are thought-provoking, disturbing, and enlightening. Every writer is worth the read.' Korean QuarterlyThis is a series of essays that give voice to contemporary Asian-American activism, offering thoughtful, radical analyses on a range of pressing issues, including: the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, the protest against the Broadway musical Miss Saigon, anti-Asian and domestic violence, feminism, neo-conservatism, art and politics, the social construction of race, and the politics of Asian American Studies.
Asian American Dreams by
This groundbreaking book traces the transformation of Asian Americans from a few small, disconnected, and largely invisible ethnic groups into a self-identified racial group that is influencing every aspect of American society. It explores the events that shocked Asian Americans into motion and shaped a new consciousness. Helen Zia, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, writes as a personal witness to the dramatic changes involving Asian Americans.
Free to Die for Their Country by
One of the Washington Post's Top Nonfiction Titles of 2001 In the spring of 1942, the federal government forced West Coast Japanese Americans into detainment camps on suspicion of disloyalty. Two years later, the government demanded even more, drafting them into the same military that had been guarding them as subversives. Most of these Americans complied, but Free to Die for Their Country is the first book to tell the powerful story of those who refused. Based on years of research and personal interviews, Eric L. Muller re-creates the emotions and events that followed the arrival of those draft notices, revealing a dark and complex chapter of America's history.
Citizen Internees by
Through a new collection of primary documents about Japanese internment during World War II, this book enables a broader understanding of the injustice experienced by displaced people within the United States in the 20th century. In the 1940s, Japanese and Japanese American internees of Redwood City, CA, had a dedicated ally: J. Elmer Morrish, a banker who kept their businesses alive, made sure their taxes were paid, and safeguarded their properties until after the end of World War II and the internees were finally released. What were Morrish's motivations for his tireless efforts to help the internees? How did the unjustly incarcerated deal with the loss of freedom in the camps, and how did they envision their future? And how did the internees both cooperate with the U.S. government and attempt to resist victimization? Citizen Internees: A Second Look at Race and Citizenship in Japanese American Internment Camps is an edited selection from a collection of more than 2,000 pieces of correspondence--some of which is previously unpublished--regarding the internment of Japanese and Japanese Americans from Redwood City, CA. These primary source documents reveal the experiences and emotions of a group of imprisoned people attempting to run the necessary day-to-day tasks of the lives they were forced to leave behind--as property owners, taxpayers, and proprietors. Through these letters about practical matters, readers can gain insight into the internees' changing family relations, their financial concerns, and their struggles in making decisions about an uncertain future. The book also includes essays that supply background information, analysis of the documents' contents and meaning, and historical context. Enables readers to see--through primary documents comprising letters written by the internees and banker J. Elmer Moorish in Redwood City, CA--how Japanese-American citizens who were interned during World War II handled their financial affairs Analyzes the interactions between Japanese Americans and Anglo-Americans during a period of widespread xenophobia and racial tension in the United States Helps readers to better understand the important issues of citizenship and race in America during and just after World War II Reveals new information on the day-to-day lives of Japanese Americans while residing in internment camps located in various areas of the United States
Japanese-American Internment During World War II by
Provides a detailed account of the evacuation and internment of Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans; describes living conditions in the camps; discusses the economic, emotional, and physical toll on interned Japanese-Americans; and ponders the legacy of internment on American society. Includes biographies, primary sources, and more.
Last Witnesses Reflections on the Wartime Internment of Japanes Americans by
Sixty years after President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066, which resulted in the mass incarceration of over 110,000 people of Japanese descent, two-thirds of them American citizens, the question could this happen again? remains unresolved. For the writers represented in this volume - novelists, memoirists, poets, activists, professors, students, professionals - the wartime internment is a central and as yet unclosed chapter of American history. Former internees and their children join with others to offer a cross generational and compelling story, told in part by some of the people who lived it, that continues to tarnish the American Dream.
Prisoners Without Trial by
As issues of national security have recently led many to question the scope and extent of our civil liberties, there is a rekindled interest in the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War. This brief guide uncovers the history of that tragic part of our past. Prisoners Without Trial is part of the celebrated Hill and Wang Critical Issues Series, which offers several concise and affordable works on pivotal topics in American history, society, and politics.
Empire's end : a history of the Far East from high colonialism to Hong Kong by
"To the haunting notes of a lone bugle playing "The Last Post," the sole remaining Western flag is lowered. With Hong Kong's return to China on June 30, 1997, an era of empire ends, exactly five hundred years after Vasco de Gama first sailed to the Asian mainland. As recently as 1930, half of the world's population was somewhere subject to American, British, French or Dutch colonial rule; two generations later, the West's empires in the East are extinct. In the process, the Orient, once a byword for things sleepy, mysterious and decadent, has become a catchphrase for all things modern and dynamic. What happened? What are the legacies left by five hundred years of colonial presence? For legacies there are - deep ones - and ignoring them is perilous for anyone who hopes to understand modern-day Asia." "European or American troops are no longer stationed in the Pacific by right. Culturally and economically, though, the East and the West have never been more closely tied. No book has ever explored the relationship between the two so fully as John Keay's Empire's End, a magnificent work of history that takes the first full measure of a powerful evolutionary process that has pulled the world from the Age of Empire into the Asian Century."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
When Broken Glass Floats by
In a Cambodian proverb, when broken glass floats is the time when evil triumphs over good. That time began for the Him family in 1975, when the Khmer Rouge took power in Cambodia and they began their trek through the hell of the killing fields. In a heart-wrenching memoir, Chanrithy Him vividly tells of her childhood, growing up in a Cambodia where rudimentary labour camps are the norm and technology, such as cars and electricity, no longer exitst. As she struggles to understand the suffering and violence around her, she shows proof of unbounded courage and great hope.
First they killed my father : a daughter of Cambodia remembers by
One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung's family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed. Harrowing yet hopeful, Loung's powerful story is an unforgettable account of a family shaken and shattered, yet miraculously sustained by courage and love in the face of unspeakable brutality.
Facing the Mountain: a true story of Japanese American heroes in World War II by
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER One of NPR's "Books We Love" of 2021 Longlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography Winner of the Christopher Award "Masterly. An epic story of four Japanese-American families and their sons who volunteered for military service and displayed uncommon heroism... Propulsive and gripping, in part because of Mr. Brown's ability to make us care deeply about the fates of these individual soldiers...a page-turner." - Wall Street Journal From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Boys in the Boat, a gripping World War II saga of patriotism and resistance, focusing on four Japanese American men and their families, and the contributions and sacrifices that they made for the sake of the nation. In the days and months after Pearl Harbor, the lives of Japanese Americans across the continent and Hawaii were changed forever. In this unforgettable chronicle of war-time America and the battlefields of Europe, Daniel James Brown portrays the journey of Rudy Tokiwa, Fred Shiosaki, and Kats Miho, who volunteered for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and were deployed to France, Germany, and Italy, where they were asked to do the near impossible. Brown also tells the story of these soldiers' parents, immigrants who were forced to submit to life in concentration camps on U.S. soil. Woven throughout is the chronicle of Gordon Hirabayashi, one of a cadre of patriotic resisters who stood up against their government in defense of their own rights. Whether fighting on battlefields or in courtrooms, these were Americans under unprecedented strain, doing what Americans do best--striving, resisting, pushing back, rising up, standing on principle, laying down their lives, and enduring.
They Called Us Enemy by
New York Times Bestseller! A stunning graphic memoir recounting actor/author/activist George Takei's childhood imprisoned within American concentration camps during World War II. Experience the forces that shaped an American icon -- and America itself -- in this gripping tale of courage, country, loyalty, and love. George Takei has captured hearts and minds worldwide with his captivating stage presence and outspoken commitment to equal rights. But long before he braved new frontiers in Star Trek, he woke up as a four-year-old boy to find his own birth country at war with his father's -- and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future. In 1942, at the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, every person of Japanese descent on the west coast was rounded up and shipped to one of ten "relocation centers," hundreds or thousands of miles from home, where they would be held for years under armed guard. They Called Us Enemy is Takei's firsthand account of those years behind barbed wire, the joys and terrors of growing up under legalized racism, his mother's hard choices, his father's faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future. What does it mean to be American? Who gets to decide? When the world is against you, what can one person do? To answer these questions, George Takei joins co-writers Justin Eisinger & Steven Scott and artist Harmony Becker for the journey of a lifetime.
From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: the killing of Vincent Chin and the trial that galvanized the Asian American movement by 
Fighting Without Fighting: Kung Fu cinema's journey to the West by
From classic Bruce Lee films to the comedies of Jackie Chan, a vibrant look at the enduring fascination with the kung fu cinema of Hong Kong. In the spring and summer of 1973, a wave of martial arts movies from Hong Kong--epitomized by Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon--smashed box-office records for foreign-language films in America and ignited a "kung fu craze" that swept the world. Fighting without Fighting explores this dramatic phenomenon, and it argues that, more than just a cinematic fad, the West's sudden fascination with--and moral panic about--the Asian fighting arts left lasting legacies still present today. The book traces the background of the craze in the longer development of Hong Kong's martial arts cinema. It discusses the key films in detail, as well as their popular reception and the debates they ignited, where kung fu challenged Western identities and raised anxieties about violence, both on and off-screen. And it examines the proliferation of ideas and images from these films in fields as diverse as popular music, superhero franchises, children's cartoons, and contemporary art. Illuminating and accessible, Fighting without Fighting draws a vivid bridge between East and West.
Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger, and the wars in Southeast Asia by
This gripping account interweaves Nixon and Kissinger's pursuit of the war in Southeast Asia and their diplomacy with the Soviet Union and China with on-the-ground military events and US domestic reactions to the war conducted in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.Fire and Rain is a compelling, meticulous narrative of the way national security decisions formed at the highest levels of government affect the lives of individuals at home and abroad. By drawing these connections, Carolyn Woods Eisenberg brings to life policy decisions about Vietnam, Laos, andCambodia, conveying their significance to a new generation of readers. She breaks fresh ground in contextualizing Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger's decisions within a wider institutional and societal framework. While recognizing the distinctive personalities and ideas of these two men, this studymore broadly conveys the competing roles and impact of the professional military, the Congress, and a mobilized peace movement.Drawing upon a vast collection of declassified documents, Eisenberg presents an important re-interpretation of the Nixon Administration's relations with the Soviet Union and China vis a vis the war in Southeast Asia. She argues that in their desperate effort to overcome, or at least overshadow,their failure in Vietnam, Nixon and Kissinger made major concessions to both nations in the field of arms control, their response to the India-Pakistan war, and the diplomacy surrounding Taiwan--much of this secret. Despite policymakers' claims that the Vietnam War was a "national security"necessity that would demonstrate American strength to the communist superpowers and "credibility" to friendly governments, the historical record suggests a different reality.A half-century after the Paris Peace Conference marking the withdrawal of US troops and advisors from Vietnam and foreign troops from Laos and Cambodia, Fire and Rain is a dramatic account of geopolitical decision making, civil society, and the human toll of the war on the people of SoutheastAsia.
The Filipino Migration Experience: global agents of change by
The Filipino Migration Experience introduces a new dimension to the usual depiction of migrants as disenfranchised workers or marginal ethnic groups. Mina Roces suggests alternative ways of conceptualizing Filipino migrantsas critics of the family and cultural constructions of sexuality, as consumers and investors, as philanthropists, as activists, and, as historians. They have been able to transform fundamental social institutions and well-entrenched traditional norms, as well as alter the business, economic and cultural landscapes of both the homeland and the host countries to which they have migrated. Mina Roces tells the story of the Filipino migration experience from the perspective of the migrants themselves, tapping into hitherto underused primary sources from the "migrant archives" and more than 70 interviews. Bringing the fields of Filipino migration studies and Filipina/o/x American studies together, this book analyzes some of the areas where Filipino migrants have forever changed the status quo.
The Chinese and the Iron Road: building the transcontinental railroad by
The completion of the transcontinental railroad in May 1869 is usually told as a story of national triumph and a key moment for American Manifest Destiny. The Railroad made it possible to cross the country in a matter of days instead of months, paved the way for new settlers to come out west, and helped speed America's entry onto the world stage as a modern nation that spanned a full continent. It also created vast wealth for its four owners, including the fortune with which Leland Stanford would found Stanford University some two decades later. But while the Transcontinental has often been celebrated in national memory, little attention has been paid to the Chinese workers who made up 90 percent of the workforce on the Western portion of the line. The Railroad could not have been built without Chinese labor, but the lives of Chinese railroad workers themselves have been little understood and largely invisible. This landmark volume explores the experiences of Chinese railroad workers and their place in cultural memory. The Chinese and the Iron Road illuminates more fully than ever before the interconnected economies of China and the US, how immigration across the Pacific changed both nations, the dynamics of the racism the workers encountered, the conditions under which they labored, and their role in shaping both the history of the railroad and the development of the American West.
Not White Enough : the long, shameful road to Japanese American internment by
Lawrence Goldstone's Not White Enough is a comprehensive examination of a century of bigotry against Chinese and Japanese Americans that culminated in the infamous Supreme Court decision Korematsu v. United States: the landmark ruling that upheld the illegal imprisonment of more than 100,000 innocent men, women, and children who were falsely accused of endangering national security during World War II. This book is the first to trace the full arc of prejudice against Asian Americans that made internment inevitable and serves as a legal and political history of anti-Asian racism, beginning with the California gold rush and ending with the infamous Korematsu decision. Not White Enough demonstrates how the lines between law and politics blurred for decades to enable a two-tiered system of justice where constitutional guarantees of equality under law were no longer upheld for all people. Goldstone examines each of the key Supreme Court decisions--including Wong Kim Ark, Ozawa, and Thind--as not simply jurisprudence but as expressions of political will. He chronicles the political history of racism that made Japanese internment almost inevitable, highlighting the key roles San Francisco mayors James D. Phelan and Eugene Schmitz, political boss Abe Ruef, California attorney general Ulysses Webb, and future Chief Justice Earl Warren played in instigating some of the most egregious anti-Asian legislation, all for political convenience and gain. Goldstone also illustrates Chinese and Japanese immigrants' courage and determination to carve out a place for themselves in a country that did everything it could to reject them.
Facing the Mountain : an inspiring story of Japanese American patriots in World War II by
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER One of NPR's "Books We Love" of 2021 Longlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography Winner of the Christopher Award "Masterly. An epic story of four Japanese-American families and their sons who volunteered for military service and displayed uncommon heroism... Propulsive and gripping, in part because of Mr. Brown's ability to make us care deeply about the fates of these individual soldiers...a page-turner." - Wall Street Journal From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Boys in the Boat, a gripping World War II saga of patriotism and resistance, focusing on four Japanese American men and their families, and the contributions and sacrifices that they made for the sake of the nation. In the days and months after Pearl Harbor, the lives of Japanese Americans across the continent and Hawaii were changed forever. In this unforgettable chronicle of war-time America and the battlefields of Europe, Daniel James Brown portrays the journey of Rudy Tokiwa, Fred Shiosaki, and Kats Miho, who volunteered for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and were deployed to France, Germany, and Italy, where they were asked to do the near impossible. Brown also tells the story of these soldiers' parents, immigrants who were forced to submit to life in concentration camps on U.S. soil. Woven throughout is the chronicle of Gordon Hirabayashi, one of a cadre of patriotic resisters who stood up against their government in defense of their own rights. Whether fighting on battlefields or in courtrooms, these were Americans under unprecedented strain, doing what Americans do best--striving, resisting, pushing back, rising up, standing on principle, laying down their lives, and enduring.